


Counterweight

by Medie



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Community: hc_bingo, Gen, Gen Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-31
Updated: 2011-05-31
Packaged: 2017-10-19 23:42:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/206485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Medie/pseuds/Medie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She finds the first among her own people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Counterweight

**Author's Note:**

> Written [](http://hc-bingo.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**hc_bingo**](http://hc-bingo.dreamwidth.org/) for the prompt "mutation"

She finds the first among her own people. A little girl with fat curls and laughing grey eyes, shunned even by the beggars; an Airbender with a faint blue arrow peeking out from beneath her bangs.

Ursa watches from beneath the hood of her cape, astonished as the little girl chases a tiny whirlwind of her own making.

She's still there days later when Ursa leaves her tiny apartment at first light, wrapped in her peasant's cloak. Alone.

Ursa crouches before the child. "You shouldn't be here, little one." She tips her head and laughs at her own mistake. "In more ways than one."

She bundles the child into her arms and rises. "Come," she says, moving toward the gates of the city and, beyond that, the borders of her world. "Neither of us belong here."

The little girl snuggles closer, but the empty ache of Ursa's arms does nothing but grow with every step.

-

It's a year before she finds the next. She and Lin are living in the Earth Kingdom, if only just so, in a tiny hut on a sparsely populated island.

Her Airbending ability growing almost as quickly as her height, Lin still laughs and the lilt of her voice fills the air with songs that can almost make Ursa forget. It's a good life, a quiet one, and they even begin venturing into the neighbouring villages--Lin's inexplicable marks carefully hidden, of course--who take her for a healer.

Recalling what she can of her childhood training and the faint memories of her grandparents' teaching, Ursa does what she can.

"I don't understand," the woman says, tears in her eyes as she sits before Ursa with the squalling baby in her arms. "Such _markings_."

Leaning forward, Ursa holds out her hands. "Might I?" She smiles, gentle, as the young woman sniffles, but reluctantly passes the child to her.

She hums beneath her breath, a lullaby Zuko had favoured, as she unwraps the child, lifting the cloth to see the faint blue of an arrow marking his little forehead.

Passing the child back, Ursa rises. "Come inside," she says, calling for Lin as she goes. "You and your child are welcome."

-

They come to her after that, more and more with each passing year, all of them finding their way to her door from every corner and every people. Over time, a small village spreads out around Ursa's hut, teenagers and children with warm grey eyes and blue arrows bright against their skin.

"I don't understand it," she says, the morning after a dozen new children arrive, quiet in her uncertainty. Lin's hair is thick and luxurious beneath her hands, the braid old habit now, but each movement a slash on her heart. She'd done this for Azula once so many years ago and, although it had been but a handful of times, the memory pains even now. "All these years and I've never found an explanation."

The Air Nomads died. All of them. Wiped out by the Fire Lord's campaigns. No one left to bring forth another generation and yet she finds herself surrounded by one and one bearing the marks of mastery.

Lin looks up with a smile. "And yet you've never thought to ask us, Highness." She stands, eye to eye with Ursa now, and presents the arrows on her hands. "Perhaps because you saw these." She smiles and bows low. "The Avatar's blood runs in your veins, how could you not know?"

"You remember." Ursa steps back and takes in the girl before her with eyes anew. "You bear the marks because you remember-"

"Remember a life among the clouds and a death embraced in fire?" Lin nods and reaches out to take Ursa's hands in hers. "Of course, the spirits knew we would need our memories. Only one of our number remained, how else would we rebuild?"

"Then what am I doing here?" Ursa asks. "If you remember everything--"

"We are still children," Lin laughs. "I was a monk and an old one at that. I know nothing of being a young woman and I barely remember being a child. I needed you." She looks to the door and the children playing just outside. "We still do."

The pain in her voice is familiar and Ursa draws her close. "Then I am here for as long as I am needed."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Counterweight (the starting over remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/406946) by [such_heights](https://archiveofourown.org/users/such_heights/pseuds/such_heights)




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